UT fans score season's first win with Longhorn Network deal

Updated 11:28 pm, Friday, August 31, 2012

The Texas Longhorns don't tee it up until tonight, but several thousand Texas fans scored their biggest win of the year thus far in the dead of night Friday.

AT&T's U-verse television service became the second national distributor to launch ESPN's Longhorn Network, a day before the channel broadcasts the Longhorns' season opener against Wyoming.

The deal with AT&T, which has about 4.1 million U-verse TV subscribers nationwide, significantly boosts the potential reach for the Longhorn Network, which celebrated its first anniversary this week. LHN was available to about 4.5 million subscribers, with Verizon's FiOS service as its only national provider.

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DeLoss Dodds, who as Texas athletic director helped create the 20-year, $300 million partnership with ESPN, said the agreement with AT&T was signed at 3 a.m. Friday, and the Longhorn Network went live on U-verse at about 4:30 a.m.

"I'm not shocked by it," Dodds said. "I've been expecting it, but it's very pleasant to have it happen. ESPN will continue to work on this until they get it done, and they will get it done. This is a huge step. It's not an end result. It's a step in the right direction."

The channel is available for U-verse customers in Texas with the company's U100 package and above and outside of Texas for subscribers to the U450 package. AT&T would not say how many customers it has in Texas.

Growing audience

AT&T spokesperson Jill Rountree said the company had no comment on the number of subscriber orders or on wait times for service connections.

"Installations will be scheduled on a first-come, first-served basis, and we're making every effort to accommodate installation requests in a timely manner," she said in an e-mail.

David Preschlack, ESPN's senior vice president for affiliate sales and marketing, said the agreement with AT&T "moves the ball forward for us in a meaningful way."

"We're clearly more optimistic coming out of this deal," he said. "We're happy with the product and with the distribution that we have, but we're not satisfied."

Preschlack said last week that ESPN was determined to reach agreements in line with deals it reached a year ago with Verizon FiOS, which is available in Texas only in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and with a group of smaller cable companies across Texas.

He said the AT&T agreement meets that criteria and that ESPN has offered deals along the same lines to other regional and national carriers. ESPN and AT&T did not disclose financial details, but the network was believed to be seeking a monthly fee of 40 cents per subscriber from carriers.

"Getting a deal done with AT&T supports the approach we're taking with this great product," Preschlack said. "I'm hopeful that other distributors will see the light of day and that deals that have been good enough for AT&T and Verizon and smaller mom-and-pop cable companies are good enough for operators who haven't done a deal yet."

He said ESPN hopes to reach agreements with larger entities like Comcast, Time Warner, DirecTV and Dish Network "as quickly as possible. It's not an 'if,' it's a 'when.'"

In Houston, where Comcast is the largest cable provider, spokesman Craig D'Agostini said in an e-mail, "We have had a great ongoing relationship with ESPN and we continue to talk with them regarding the carriage of the Longhorn Network."

No deals imminent

In San Antonio, Time Warner spokeswoman Melissa Sorola said in an e-mail, "We routinely talk with ESPN about a myriad of business issues, and we continue to discuss whether the addition of the Longhorn Network is in the best interest of all of our customers."

DirecTV spokesman Robert Mercer said in an e-mail the company has had "intermittent discussions (about LHN), but we have no current plans to add it to our customers' line-ups."

He said DirecTV will continue to evaluate LHN, but added, "In our effort to keep our customers' monthly bills at an affordable level, it's just not reasonable to expect every customer to pay more to get Longhorn Network without having the choice of whether they want it or not."

Longhorn Network also will air the Longhorns' game against New Mexico on Sept. 8.